Media Freaks as Maine Governor Refuses to Adhere to Statewide Vote

Even after eight years in office, Gov. Paul LePage can still drive liberals crazy.

The Maine Republican already had a reputation for contrary behavior and a governing style that was definitely not politically correct, but his latest stance is sending opponents ever further around the bend than usual.

That’s because LePage is refusing to go along with the results of a popular referendum on one of Obamacare’s most suicidal provisions.

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With LePage in the governor’s office, Maine has been one of 18 states that didn’t expand Medicaid from a program for families with children, the elderly and others with special needs to a much wider program that covers all low-income, able-bodied adults.

According to the Bangor Daily News, LePage has vetoed bills approved by Maine’s legislature to expand Medicaid five times during his time in office.

Without getting into the weeks of Medicaid funding and Maine politics, it’s important to concede that LePage’s critics do have a point. The people spoke through the referendum, and it’s a lawmaker’s job to carry out the people’s will.

But it’s also vital to point out that LePage’s concerns about Medicaid funding are not only solidly based in theory, they’re actually playing out in the states that did adopt Medicaid expansion in the heady days after the monstrosity of Obamacare became law.

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As an October report in US News pointed out, Medicaid expansion has been a prescription for disaster for the states that went along with it.

“Lured by the shiny promise of providing health insurance to more people, too many governors neglected silly concerns like fiscal integrity,” the report says. “In the cases of Kentucky and New Hampshire, Republican governors are trying to clean up messes left by Democratic predecessors. In Ohio, a Republican legislature is trying to clean up the mess created and perpetuated by Republican Gov. John Kasich. There, Kasich imposed Medicaid expansion over the heads of a legislature that opposed it. Eighteen months later, the plan was $1.5 billion over budget, but Kasich continues to moralize while spending spirals out of control. Medicaid costs have risen 35 percent over the past four years, from $18.9 billion in fiscal 2013 to $25.7 billion this year.”

None of those arguments matter to liberals nationally, because they wanted to use the Maine vote as ammunition for the argument that the Trump presidency is being rejected by voters who long for the days of Obama (and the disaster known as Obamacare).

It’s also important to liberals to bash LePage, who was a well-known opponent of the Obama administration despite his state’s small size, thanks to his high-profile stances on issues like transgender bathrooms and his distaste for those who abuse food stamps.

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Critics can say LePage is defying the law with his position, but his warnings about the financial perils of Obamacare are being justified in real time throughout the country.

Thanks to term limits, he won’t be able to run again for governor. If Maine voters want to continue down a financially suicidal path, they can always elect someone who will agree with them in November.

Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade over 30 years to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.